tri-Ace was formed in March 1995 by former
Telenet Japan employees Yoshiharu Gotanda (programmer, current tri-Ace President), Masaki Norimoto (game designer) and Joe Asanuma (director). The name is a play on words regarding the "three
aces" who formed the company. Most of tri-Ace's games have been
published by
Square Enix (formerly
Enix). The company exclusively makes
role-playing video games, and is known for giving its games' action-packed battle systems and deep skill systems. This trademark style began when the founders of tri-Ace originally worked for Telenet Japan's
Wolfteam, and had created
Tales of Phantasia. This game, published by
Namco, is a precursor to tri-Ace's own
Star Ocean games in several ways; e.g., an action battle system where the player controls one character and AI controls others in the party and special battle skills that the player can assign to different buttons. Besides the
Star Ocean series, it also released
Valkyrie Profile in 1999. After its long-time
Square Enix liaison and producer, Yoshinori Yamagishi, announced that he was done working on the
Star Ocean series in 2009, several of tri-Ace's works started to be published by different game companies other than Square Enix. Such as its 2010 release of
Resonance of Fate which was taken to Sega publishing. The company's sound programmer
Hiroya Hatsushiba formed
tri-Crescendo in 1999 which has since developed several games independently of tri-Ace. Japanese mobile company Nepro Japan acquired tri-Ace in February 2015. Despite being acquired by a company focusing on mobile gaming, tri-Ace continued developing video games for consoles,{{cite web|url=http://www.siliconera.com/2015/03/09/dont-worry-tri-ace-will-keep-making-games-consoles/|title=Don't Worry, tri-Ace Will Keep Making Games For Consoles ==Games developed==